Leviticus 19:3

Chapters 17–26 of Leviticus are often called the Holiness Code, because they work out in daily life what it means for Israel to be holy. Leviticus 19 runs through a wide range of laws about justice, honesty, compassion and worship, and these two verses stand first after the call of verse 2. Before anything else, God speaks of the family, the sabbaths and the worship that belongs to him alone. Holiness is something inward and outward at once, a matter of character and of conduct.

Israel had lately come out of Egypt, a land of many gods and their images, and was on the way to Canaan, where Baal and Asherah were worshipped with images and elaborate rituals. God was forming them into a nation under his covenant, set apart from the nations they were to dispossess. Much of what these verses command was already given at Sinai in the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20: no other gods and no graven images (Exodus 20:3–5), the sabbath, and honour for father and mother (Exodus 20:8–12). Moses sets the sabbath and the honour of parents side by side again in Deuteronomy 5:12–16.

The verb is yârêʼ, “to fear”. Toward parents it means reverence, awe and deep respect: honouring their authority, valuing their wisdom, deferring to them and caring for them. It is an attitude of the heart that shows itself in obedience, and it carries the same reverence that Scripture asks us to have toward God himself. Parents hold an authority God has given them, so the respect a son or daughter shows them belongs to the same life of reverence that is owed to the LORD. Learning to honour father and mother is one of the first ways a person learns to fear God.

The command is given to “every man”, so each Israelite owed it to his own mother and father, and the verse names the mother first. This reverence lasts a lifetime. It means obedience while we are young, and honour and care as we grow older and as our parents reach old age. Paul carries the command into the church when he tells children to obey their parents (Ephesians 6:1–3), and the family stands here as one of the foundations of a holy people.

The word shabbâth means an intermission, a ceasing from labour. The verse uses it in the plural, “my sabbaths”. That takes in the weekly day of rest, and it may also take in the yearly holy days when Israel stopped its ordinary work to worship and to remember what God had done, such as Passover, the Day of Atonement and the feast of tabernacles. God calls them “my” sabbaths, because the days and the rest belong to him.

The sabbath was a sign of the covenant between the LORD and Israel, and it set Israel apart from the nations around them, which had no day of rest given by their gods. Each week it reminded the people that God had made the world and that he had brought them out of Egypt, where they had known no rest. Stopping work was an act of faith. A family that laid down its labour for a day was trusting God to provide, and was declaring to everyone around that it belonged to him.

To turn, pânâh, means to turn or to face. Here it is turning toward idols, looking to them for help or giving them worship. The second command forbids making such gods. Between them the verse covers the heart that turns toward false gods and the hands that make their images.

The word for idols, ʼĕlîyl, means “good for nothing”, vain, vanity, and so an idol. The name itself passes judgment on every false god. The LORD acts in history and speaks to his people, while idols are lifeless and powerless, and they deceive those who trust them, leading to spiritual barrenness and moral corruption.

“Molten” translates maççêkâh, a pouring, the fusing of metal, and so a cast image made by pouring metal into a mould. In other places the same word can mean a libation, a league, or a covering. Israel knew exactly what a molten god was. Soon after the Law was given, Aaron made a molten calf at Sinai (Exodus 32:4). The words “to yourselves” point to who would be making these gods. They would be gods of the people’s own making, set up outside the worship God himself had given.

Both verses close with God’s own declaration of who he is. “The LORD” stands for Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, which speaks of him as the self-existent and eternal God and of his faithful presence with his people. Joined to “your God”, ʼĕlôhîym, it states his claim on Israel and his rule over them.

The same words, or the shorter “I am the LORD”, come again and again through this chapter (Leviticus 19:10, 19:12) and more than forty times in the book, most of them in chapters 17–26. They remind Israel that their God is the one who brought them out of slavery, as he said at Sinai: “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). They give every command its authority, since each one flows from God’s holy character. And they make obedience a loving answer to the God who chose his people and bound himself to them. Israel is to be holy because he is holy, and the commands of these verses become acts of worship offered to him.

Jesus kept the command to honour parents perfectly. As a boy he went home with Mary and Joseph and “was subject unto them” (Luke 2:51), and from the cross he provided for his mother (John 19:26–27). He is also Lord of the sabbath, who said that the sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27–28). He calls the weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28), and Hebrews speaks of a rest that remains for the people of God, which they enter by ceasing from their own works (Hebrews 4:9–10).

“I am the LORD your God” points forward to him as well. He is Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). To turn from idols in Israel was to turn to the LORD, and now it is to turn to Christ, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Through him we worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). By his obedience, his atoning sacrifice and his resurrection, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, he changes us from within, so that we honour our parents, rest in God and worship him alone.

These two verses show us a God who cares about the way children treat their parents, about how a nation spends its week, and about where his people turn their hearts. He puts the honour of mother and father beside his own sabbaths and his own worship, so that no part of life is too ordinary for holiness. He gives rest as a gift, a weekly reminder that he made us and redeemed us. He names idols for what they are, good for nothing, because he alone can save and he wants his people to have him.

Over all of it he says, “I am the LORD your God.” The commands rest on that promise, and in Christ the promise has come close to us. Honouring our parents, resting in him and worshipping him alone are the ways a holy people answers the holy God who has made himself theirs.